Visualizing Conti: Revealing the Business of Ransomware-as-a-Service through New Analytical Techniques

In this episode:

• How Estelle became involved in ransomware research between degrees
• The scale and origin of the ContiLeaks dataset
• Using machine learning and topic modelling to analyse criminal group communications
• What the internal chat data revealed about the organizational structure of Conti
• Surprising insights about roles, specializations, and tasking within a criminal enterprise
• Why making cybercrime research accessible through data visualization matters

About our guest:

Estelle Ruellan

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/estelle-ruellan/

Papers or resources mentioned in this episode:

Ruellan, E., Paquet-Clouston, M., & Garcia, S. (2024).Conti Inc.: understanding the internal discussions of a large ransomware-as-a-service operator with machine learning. Crime Science, 13, 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-024-00212-y

Flare Data Explorer – Explore cybercrime datasets visually:

https://flare.io/flare-data-explorer/

Other:

• Wikipedia – Conti (ransomware): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conti_(ransomware)
• Wikipedia – Topic model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_model